


Fragile Hearts

by theinvader5



Series: The Beats In Between [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, PTSD Sherlock, Post-Reichenbach, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 18:38:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvader5/pseuds/theinvader5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one way to fall apart. </p><p>A continuation of The Beats In Between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crumbledown (VerbtheAdjectiveNoun)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerbtheAdjectiveNoun/gifts).



> Special thanks to emeraldcranberryjuice and rosechan789 for beta-ing and to acrumblebatchwithcustardfreeman for allowing me an enormous amount of freedom on this commission. I cannot thank you enough.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read The Beats In Between and left encouragement. It was much appreciated. I hope you continue to enjoy my stories in the future.

John decided it was easier when Sherlock was screaming.

He looked like a question mark curled up on the floor near the window, his violin abandoned near his feet. He’d been like that when John came back from his shift at the surgery and the doctor can feel his heart sinking in his chest, stone cold weight dragging him to the floor next to his flatmate. 

At least when Sherlock woke hoarse and terrified, John knew what to do. He would gather him onto his lap, feel his heart fluttering beneath wax paper skin like a trapped bird and tell him everything would be alright, that it was all over now. It didn't matter that they both knew John was lying; it seemed to work well enough and Sherlock never mentioned how empty the words sounded. Then again, Sherlock didn't say much of anything anymore. He talked sometimes, but he communicated mostly in small movements; a hand tightening on John's sleeve or a slight shift toward John's body heat when he sat watching television or the way he would look at him with eyes like broken glass, silently begging him not to go to work that day. As it was, John hardly left the flat at all except to get groceries or go to the surgery because he couldn't stand seeing the desperation in Sherlock's face, the naked expression making him look younger and more vulnerable than John had ever seen him. His protest was never loud, never vocal; but when John came back with plastic bags biting into his fingers, Sherlock would follow him the rest of the day, never letting John out of his sight, as if he needed to constantly remind himself that he was really there.

John completely understood how he felt.

The day he brought him home, he had been wary, watchful, hardly leaving Sherlock’s side out of fear that if he turned around he’d be gone, or worse, he’d find him bloody and cold, eyes vacant, pulse still. But Sherlock seemed fine, if a little quiet and didn’t appear to mind John hovering as he walked slowly through the flat. He smiled a little when he saw his violin, exactly where he’d left it, running a finger along the scroll as though the wood could feel his touch. He picked up the instrument with such delicacy, gently pulling the bow across two strings, the sound floating up into the rafters, ringing softly, before fading into silence. The music was hesitant at first, like a dancer trying to reacquaint themselves with their partner, but soon the flat was echoing with notes Sherlock seemed to be pulling from his very blood, heavy and rich, dripping from his fingertips to mingle with the rosin dust that rose around him like wood smoke and John had to bite his lip to keep from crying.

Everything seemed alright then, for awhile. Sherlock sat in front of his microscope and read John’s old anatomy texts and watched telly and played Brahms just like he used to and it was so _normal_ John let himself relax, let himself believe they could pick up their old lives and forget. But then he started noticing little things, like how Sherlock would put his eyes to the scope but forget to put a slide on the stage, or how he flinched whenever the phone rang. They went out to Angelo’s once and Sherlock refused to eat, fidgeting and avoiding the eyes of the patrons, murmuring something about it being too open, that they weren’t safe. They didn’t use to lock their door; now Sherlock would check every room in the flat before bed and double bolt the front entrance. When John asked why the first time, Sherlock just shook his head and pulled him away from the window. 

John tried not to think about it too much; Sherlock was just adjusting to being back, at least that’s what he told himself. But it wasn’t long before he realized that some of Sherlock, some fundamental fragment of the man he knew, was gone. He was somehow incomplete, the way a room is when a familiar knick knack goes missing; it isn’t noticeable until you reach for what you wanted and find it’s not there. Sherlock was back, but this was not all of him and John didn’t even want to think of the places he might have left the pieces. 

The first time John really saw, really fully comprehended the wrongness in Sherlock was two weeks after the incident in the park. Lestrade had insisted on him taking time to recuperate, and Sherlock, surprisingly, hadn’t objected. The morning they were meant to go back to the Yard for a case --“Vauxhall, home invasion, four bodies,” Sherlock had said over an untouched plate of lukewarm Pad Thai-- John had come downstairs to find him fully dressed in the middle of the sitting room, staring at his reflection in the mirror as though he were looking at a blank wall.

“You don’t have to do this,” John had said to his back, but Sherlock merely reached for his scarf where it lay on the sofa and John is taken back to that last night in Baker Street, the finality of Sherlock tying that scarf like a noose around his neck, a soldier about to knowingly walk into a hail of gunfire. It had felt wrong then and it felt wrong now and John found himself in front of the door, barring him from going into whatever battle he was preparing to fight. 

“Sherlock,” he said, but his detective just squared his jaw, gently pushed past him, and John followed because he would’ve followed Sherlock off that roof and down to the concrete had the man let him.

 

 

 

.........

 

“You’re wrong about him. His motivation, it’s not power it’s- this is why you haven’t found him. This isn’t about inflicting pain...” Sherlock reaches out, his latex clad finger grazing flesh long gone cold. “...It’s about mercy.”

“Mercy?” Sally has been subdued, withholding her usual insults, but now her features resume their familiar smirk. “He killed them, Sherlock. Look, he didn’t even lay the bodies down or anything. Just left them here at the dinner table like props. It’s barbaric, really.”

“No. Look again.”

The room goes very quiet as Sherlock circles the table.

“Do you see? Look at the arterial spray on the younger one here, where it is on her face. She was turned away from it when it hit her. Her mother is directly across from her; the blood should have hit her full in the face, but the killer made her look away. The mother died first; rigor mortis is slightly more advanced in her than it is in the children. If the killer’s aim was to make them suffer then he would kill her last, make her experience the loss of her children before she died.”

“Seems like a bit of a reach-” Greg starts but Sherlock shakes his head, shuts his eyes as though the words physically pain him. 

“No, no, look. _Look._ They knew their attacker. No one tried to run; he was someone they trusted, implicitly so. There’s no cruelty in the way he killed them; clean cuts across the carotid, down to the bone nearly. He was a butcher’s son, clearly knew what he was doing. They would have died in less than a minute.”

“What’s his motivation though? We know they’re a poor family, obviously. Father was into drugs, had it in with the mob pretty deep. He probably killed them as some sort of...I don’t know sick initiation or something. The apartment was locked from the outside so he must’ve run after he did the deed. Mob’s probably hid him somewhere, which is why we called you in, you’re the best at ferreting these types out. So we've got a motive; now we just need you to help us find the son of a bitch.”

“Well if you have his motivation then why can’t you find him?” Sherlock says softly. The statement holds none of his usual arrogance and John feels strangely off balance without it. Greg and Sally too seem wary, unsure of how to deal with the stranger in front of them.

“Follow me.”

Greg steps forward without hesitation and the team follows Sherlock down several flights of stairs to a emergency exit on the fifth floor of the building. He opens it and steps out onto the narrow landing of the fire escape, walking nimbly along the rusted metal. John pushes his way to the front of the pack, suddenly anxious about Sherlock’s proximity to the edge and the sickening drop below. By the time they all catch up to him, Sherlock is waiting at the bottom of the third flight of steps, staring up at something on the ledge above.  

An arm dangles from between the slats.

“Alex Guiseppe,” Sherlock says finally in a voice heavy with the weight of years still ahead of him. “Thirty-eight. Married to Edina Guiseppe. Father to Josephine and Catalina, ages 10 and 6 respectively. Died of cranial hemorrhaging after he jumped from the fire escape, which he accessed via the emergency exit on the twelfth floor. If you check his left pocket, you should find a cell phone. The last text he received should be from a private number with a message to the effect of, ‘Have the money by X date and/or time.‘ I would guess he borrowed funds, most likely for rent, if the eviction notice in the mail slot is any indication. An ‘or else‘ is superfluous; we know how the mob deals with these things. His daughters would likely be sold as human merchandise, his wife raped and murdered as is the usual custom. He himself would be killed, brutally, an example to all other members of the organization. So rather than let his family be brutalized by strangers, he did it himself with all the gentleness he could. This was his final act of love: this...was mercy.” 

Sherlock does not stay to bask in his moment of triumph, barely responds to the timid “well done” offered to him by Greg and the nod from Sally that, to John, speaks volumes. Instead, he carefully makes his way back through the throng of Yarders and down the fire escape. By the time John manages to do the same, Sherlock is out of sight. 

He spends ten fruitless minutes jogging up and down the street calling his name before finding Sherlock a block away, huddled in the alleyway with blood on his palms where he scratched at the skin. John swallows down the acidic taste of panic that rises in the back of his throat.  He is afraid that if he touches him, he will shatter like he does in his nightmares, each fragment slowly peeling away from the next until Sherlock is nothing more than bits of glass and blue china eyes, the blood lapping at John’s oxfords like waves on a beach.  

“Hey. Can you hear me? Sherlock?” 

The detective doesn’t respond, just keeps his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him. John waits almost a minute for him to speak, considers trying his name again.

“I didn’t mean to.”

John doesn’t know what he means, isn’t sure Sherlock is even aware of where he is, so he keeps his movements slow and measured, his joints creaking as he kneels on the pavement next to his friend. 

“It’s okay. Let me see your hands. Do you remember how you got here?”

Sherlock lifts his head a fraction, the movement jerky and robotic.

“I was in Belize. They weren’t...they weren’t meant to be in the flat. The records said he and his wife were estranged so the woman must’ve been his sister. She brought the children to visit. A girl and a boy. The boy was the eldest. Couldn’t have been more than nine. ”  

John squints in confusion as he takes Sherlock’s hands in his, ignoring the sick feeling in his gut at the sight of Sherlock’s blood dripping languidly onto the asphalt. “What are you talking about?”

“I rigged the explosive while he was out. Waited in the empty flat next door. The whole building shook when the charge detonated, so hard the plates all fell out of the shelves. The noise was...it left that ringing. A-an A sharp. And when I went over to confirm the kill, the girl was the only one left. Her legs were gone and I couldn’t just...she had brown eyes. I think it was her birthday. I killed her on her birthday. I’d forgotten until now.”

John says nothing, continues to hold Sherlock’s bleeding hands, the marks like trenches  on his skin. 

“...I think these are going to scar,” John says to no one in particular.

 

 

......

Please.

_The word was grit on his tongue as he stared up into the glare of a burning star that heated the sand beneath his back. It slipped out before he realized; a plea for help from a god he did not believe in. Anything to stop the pain, to stop the steady flow of blood like water dripping from a tap, slow but persistent as his heart pushed the life from his veins._

Please. 

_Whispered in the dark to his sister while he knelt on the tile in front of her, his hand gripping an empty bottle of Smirnoff, the glass warm against his palm and slick with sweat and vomit. It was just after their mother died. Harry checked into rehab two days later, and John could not recall feeling more grateful for anything in his life._

Please.

_Static in the receiver of a cell phone as he reaches towards the man plummeting to the sidewalk, hoping, somehow, to catch him, pull him back, take his face in his hands and tell him every word he can think of so that he understands, so he knows that if he goes it will kill them both. It is a word that mingles with the blood that seeps into the cracks in the pavement and trickles into the drains, fragments and particles of the most important man in the universe being carried away from him to a place he can’t follow. He silently begs them to come back._

“Sherlock, please.”

_Come back._

But Sherlock has not said a word in weeks.

It’s as though he has become little more than air, moving through the flat soundlessly like the ghost he is. John wants to hit him sometimes, if only to prove that he’s really there. He knows that’s wrong though, that’s crazy, Sherlock would shatter beneath his fists, brittle bones turned to dust. And like that, he pushes the thoughts aside.

Even so, he feels his sanity fading, slipping quietly down the drain as he showers, floating out the window as he lights cigarettes like candles at a sidewalk vigil, letting them burn in the absurdly expensive ashtray Sherlock stole from Buckingham a lifetime ago. John’s not entirely sure why he does it; he only knows that it’s strangely comforting to think of cancer growing in his lungs. It’s not so much that he wants to die; he just wants to destroy something if only a little.

He looks to the man curled on the floor, his shoulder blades showing through the fabric of the t-shirt he’s wearing. 

“Please.”

John can count on one hand the number of times he’s begged for anything and Sherlock is on that list twice. _One more miracle, Sherlock, for me-_

“Would you just fucking say something?”

The anger in his tone surprises him, the words harsh and loud in the quiet of the flat and John starts a little at the sound of them. He waits for some sort of reaction from the breathing corpse on the floor, waits and waits, but nothing happens, and John is so tired of his own voice, of pleading, of Sherlock and his silence. He _hates_ it, hates _him_ , with a desperation that makes his fists shake, itching with the need to break something.

Sherlock happens to be closest.

Even as his muscles tense, even as his fingers curl around dark, silken locks, even as his arm pulls back, John is screaming at himself to stop, but there are different words coming out of his mouth, painful words, words that are darker than the bruise he is leaving under Sherlock’s skin.

“Nothing to say? After all this you still don’t have anything to say to me!?”

Sherlock just coughs, his tongue darting over split skin where his teeth cut against his lip. 

John hits him again, feels his knuckles make contact with the bone of Sherlock’s brow, then does it again, harder this time, because maybe if it hurts enough Sherlock will finally look at him, finally-

_Do something._

There is blood, Sherlock’s blood, dripping from John’s hand. He can feel it trickling down his skin, the warmth of it fading quickly in the chill air, and he can’t remember how many times he’s struck the person in front of him.

_Somebody do something._

Time becomes liquid and John can feel a haze creep over him, something thick and smothering that mutes the dull slap of skin meeting skin, and in these moments he can forget that Sherlock is already broken, already gone, already lost somewhere in another time another place, another life. All that’s left are pieces John is crushing beneath his feet.  

_Stop. I can’t-_

“You should have just stayed dead! _”_ John screams and it doesn’t matter that he won’t mean it in a few minutes; he means it now, feels the truth of the words resonate in his bones. If it was going to hurt this much, he’d rather Sherlock never lived at all.

And finally, just as John rears back for another blow, Sherlock looks at him, lifting his gaze and calmly staring into John’s eyes, not with animosity or fear, but lukewarm acceptance, as though he’s been waiting for this to happen. John hesitates, fingers uncurling slightly where they are tangled in Sherlock’s hair. He stares at a red welt that is slowly spreading over Sherlock’s cheekbone and has trouble believing he put it there. 

“Why did you stop?”

His voice is soft, slightly hoarse with disuse, but gentle, starkly at odds with the violence of his appearance, his face bloody and shirt ripped open at the collar, revealing delicate lines where John’s fingernails had been. The expression on his face is almost innocent in its calm; it’s open, childlike, and John releases his grip entirely, unable to respond to the question. 

“I said why did you stop?” Cold hands close around John’s wrist guiding his hand back to where it had been moments before. The doctor swallows painfully, draws breath to speak but Sherlock beats him to it.

“Again.”

“I-...Sherlock-”

“Again. As many times as necessary. Until you’re not angry anymore.”

John tries, weakly, to pull his hand from Sherlock’s grasp but his fingers only tighten.

“I’ve been expecting this to happen for quite some time. So go on. It makes you feel better.” John can hear a hint of a smile in his voice but there is no real joy there. “I deserve this. A gun shot would’ve been preferable but this is fine. This is fine too.”

It is a moment before John can appreciate the full gravity of what Sherlock is saying but once the gears click into place it is all John can do to stay upright. He had been on edge the past few weeks, irritable and short, _unstable_ even, and Sherlock, Sherlock had thought...

“...You thought I hated you. All this time. Enough to...to end you. Just now I could’ve seriously-- Sherlock. Jesus.”

John lets his knees hit the floor, heedless of the pain of the unforgiving wood boards. He grips Sherlock’s wrist with his free hand.

“I want you to listen to me very carefully: we both have clearly been through the wringer and I was-- I was angry. For a long time. And some days I wanted to just...wake you up. Shake you out of this. But I should never have...I really did a number on you just now and I am so sorry. I am so fucking sorry. This one was all me, you did _nothing wrong_. Do you understand me, Sherlock? Nothing at all. So don’t talk to me about ‘what you deserve’ because it certainly wasn’t that.”

John manages to free his other hand and pulls Sherlock close to him, his grip loose, but insistent. He doesn’t resist, but Sherlock is trembling delicately under his fingers and guilt flares in the pit of John’s stomach at how painfully vulnerable he has become, like an exposed nerve.

“Tomorrow I’m going to call Ella,” John says fiercely. “I am going to drive to her office. And we’re gonna have a long fucking chat. Because this is not happening to you again. Ever. Alright?”

Sherlock doesn’t respond for a few heartbeats but eventually John feels his head move against his chest in a nod, hears the soft rustle of fabric as his fingers grip John’s jumper. He realizes, belatedly, that this must be uncomfortable for Sherlock, holding him this way, but neither of them move. 

John’s hand slips up to Sherlock’s curls, smoothing over the tangles left by his harsh grip, cradling a brittle skull and a fragile mind, and John is reminded of how fallible Sherlock is, has always been really. There’s just less for him to hide it behind now. Less for both of them.

The light begins to fade from the windows and John stirs his aching limbs back to life, intending to retrieve his medical kit from the bathroom, but Sherlock tenses immediately, mumbling something frantically into John’s shirt as his grip tightens around wool threads. John fights the rise of tears in his throat and reaches for Sherlock’s hands, a promise in the curve of his palm.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
